History

Both Luxemburg and Liebknecht were prominent members of the left wing faction of the German Social-Democratic Party (SPD). Liebknecht was the son of SPD founder Wilhelm Liebknecht. They moved to found an independent organization after the SPD decided to support the German government's decision to declare war on the Russian Empire in 1914, beginning what would later be known as World War I. Besides their opposition to what they saw as an imperialist war, Luxemburg and Liebknecht maintained the need for revolutionary methods, in contrast to the leadership of the SPD, who had decided to participate in the parliamentary process.

In December 1918, the Spartakusbund became the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). Although it has long been claimed that January 1, 1919, the KPD attempted to take control of Berlin in what came to be known as the Spartakus uprising, this did not in fact occur as Luxemburg,Liebknecht and others had successfully argued that an uprising would be premature since the Spartakusbund was too weak and not enough of the working class had come over to its side. It would be more accurate to say that the Communists and Independent Socialists launched a series of protests which the authoritarian socialists responded to by violently suppressing opposition on the orders of chancellor Friedrich Ebert. Luxemburg and Liebknecht, among many others, were murdered while held prisoner by the Freikorps, and their bodies dumped in a river. Hundreds of Spartacists were killed in the weeks following the uprising.

The remains of the Spartacist League continued as the KPD, which retained the League's newspaper, die Rote Fahne (Red Flag), as its publication.

The Spartacist Manifesto of 1918

One of the most notable parts of the Spartacist Manifesto (published in 1918) is the following:

The question today is not democracy or dictatorship. The question that history has put on the agenda reads: bourgeois democracy or socialist democracy. For the dictatorship of the proletariat does not mean bombs, putsches, riots and anarchy, as the agents of capitalist profits deliberately and falsely claim. Rather, it means using all instruments of political power to achieve socialism, to expropriate the capitalist class, through and in accordance with the will of the revolutionary majority of the proletariat.